Kris and Maurice Joseph meet in Buffalo to the thrill and excitement of family and friends

Courtesy of the Joseph family. D.K. Robinson, photographer. Maurice Joseph, left, endures some ribbing from his younger brother Kris after a Montreal newspaper wrote a story about Maurice a few years ago.

The minute the pairings surfaced on the flat-screen television inside the Melo Center, Kris Joseph reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

The call went out to his brother, Maurice, who had been watching those same proceedings with his Vermont teammates.

“I don’t know how we communicated,” Kris Joseph said. “It was all screaming. No words. He was going crazy, my teammates were going crazy. Because they know what this game means to both of us.”

When Syracuse faces Vermont at approximately 9:40 p.m. Friday, the Joseph brothers will be competing for opposite interests. Kris is the 6-foot-7 sophomore forward who likely will inherit a starting spot with the injury to Syracuse center Arinze Onuaku. Maurice is the 6-foot-4 senior shooting guard who ranks second on his team in scoring at 14.1 points per game.

For the brothers, who grew up in Montreal, the opportunity to play against each other on college basketball’s grandest stage has elevated the excitement level of the post-season. Kris and Maurice are sorting through ticket requests from family members and friends, trying to accommodate what they believe will be a large Joseph contingent in Buffalo.

Courtesy of the Joseph family. D.K. Robinson photographer. A young Kris Joseph.
“We’re extremely excited,” said Kizzy Joseph, one of two sisters in the family. “Words cannot explain how excited we are. We were watching the show and we were all screaming. We’ve never seen them play against each other before. And it’s so good that it’s Maurice’s final year.”

The brothers consider the tournament pairing as a triumphant culmination of their commitment to a sport that is largely ignored in their Canadian province. There were no basketball hoops at their Bedford Elementary School, so the boys would toss basketballs into a trash can they positioned against a wall. When they grew older, they took their games of 21 and one-on-one to Kent Park, where actual rims and backboards existed. During the winter months, Maurice Joseph said, they pulled on hats and gloves and played in the swirling snow.

Kizzy Joseph said the family never worried about the boys landing into trouble. Whenever they were missing, she said, sometimes as late as midnight, family members would check the park. Invariably, they would locate Kris and Maurice there playing basketball.

On Friday, the Joseph brothers’ playground will be the HSBC Arena in Buffalo.

“Growing up in the French-speaking province, basketball was on the backburner of sports in popularity,” said Maurice Joseph, who transferred to Vermont from Michigan State after the 2006-07 season. “And now we’re playing each other in the NCAA Tournament.”

“When he was at Michigan State that’s the one thing I dreamed of, just playing my brother in college basketball on a national stage,” Kris Joseph said. “And it’s finally happened.”

The brothers spoke about the possibility a day before the pairings were announced. Vermont had just beaten Boston University to claim the America East championship and the automatic bid it bestows. And Kris Joseph considered the possibilities.

“I said, ‘Bro, what if we play each other?’ He said ‘We’ll be a 14 or a 15 seed,’” Kris Joseph said. “I would have loved to play against him because I haven’t played an organized basketball game against him since I was 8.”

Courtesy of the Joseph family. D.K. Robinson photo. A young Maurice Joseph. In the tradition of big brother-little brother basketball rivalries, Kris Joseph bore the brunt of brutal domination by Maurice, who at 24 is three years older. Kris recalls the unrelenting physicality of Maurice, who would hammer him during one-on-one games and refuse to allow Kris to call fouls. The brothers taunted and challenged each other. They played a lot of basketball.

“Oh, he beat me. I got scars on my knees from the pushes on the concrete. I got all types of probably permanent bruises on my body because of him,” Kris said. “He won the majority of the games. When I got a little older and bigger, he couldn’t push me around anymore. And he wanted me on his team.”

“I was kind of rough on him,” Maurice admits, “but that’s pretty much how the big brother-little brother relationship goes.”

Kris Joseph describes his brother as a solid shooter and thus a player that SU must contain in its 2-3 zone. “You leave him open,” Kris said, “and you can pretty much count it. That’s his game.”

Maurice Joseph shoots a team-best 38 percent from 3-point range. He’s attempted (197) and made (75) more 3-pointers than any other Catamount.

Ask Maurice to evaluate his brother’s game and he declares Kris’ versatility as key to his success. His younger brother, said Maurice, can handle the ball. He’s long and athletic. “And he’s great at getting to the basket and finishing at the rim,” Maurice said.

The brothers describe themselves and the rest of their family as “extremely close.” The four siblings – Kris, Maurice, Kizzy and Marisa -- each etched tattoos into their arms that read “Diamonds are Forever.” The initials KJ, KJ, MJ and MJ sit inside a diamond shape. Maurice said a poster of his brother hangs in his Vermont room.

Both brothers spoke to their sisters after the tournament pairings were announced. Kizzy Joseph describes herself as “extremely emotional” and predicts she’ll start crying as soon as she sees her brothers on the basketball floor.

“My sister (Marisa) was pretty excited. I think she was crying the way she was sniffling. She said she was sick, but I don’t know,” Kris said after he talked to her on Sunday. “It’s big for our family. This is (Maurice’s) last year, potentially his last game. We both make the tournament and we’re both playing. So it’s nice for us.”

Courtesy of the Joseph family. D.K. Robinson photo.
Even as little boys, the Josephs believed. The poster reads: "believe in yourself ... all things are possible." Maurice isn’t sure how their mother Eartha’s nerves will withstand the game. She typically is so superstitious, Maurice said, that she sometimes refuses to watch games on television for fear her presence will jinx her sons. But this time she and the rest of the family will attend the game.

“What my mom is going to do is she has a Syracuse shirt and she has a Vermont shirt. So she might collide them. Might go half and half,” Kris said. “She’s gonna rip ‘em and stitch ‘em back up in the middle. That’s what she might do. I guess she’s just going to cheer for both of us.”

Family ties aside, both Joseph brothers understand what’s at stake Friday. They hope to see each other before the game, to hug and exclaim again about the insanity of a matchup that pits them as basketball enemies. And then “I’m going to put all the hoopla aside,” Maurice said. “There’s still a game to be played.”

As Syracuse players milled about the Melo Center Sunday evening, talking to reporters about the NCAA Tournament, Scoop Jardine suggested a wager between the Joseph brothers. The loser of the game, he proposed, should be forced to wear the victorious jersey of his brother.

Kris Joseph pondered that proposition.

“I like that,” he said. “I like that a lot. I’ll have it in Buffalo and hand it to him when we win.”